Posted on 11/07/2002 7:07:47 PM PST by Nebullis
We're supposed to keep the actual viral coat peptides confidential, but I suppose if someone were familiar enough with the literature and had a little background knowledge, they could figure it out pretty quickly.
BINGO! We have a Bingo! This is almost exactly my approach when I'm discussing this.
That being said, I believe ID is far more viable as a theory than many of the Theoretical Physics and Cosmology hypotheses I've listened to the past 20 years which attempt to "wrap up the loose ends". It seems a nod must be given in the classroom to the failure of the Darwinians to wrap up many loose ends despite many attempts to do so, and that some good scientists believe ID is a possible way out.
This type of teaser: telling future scientists that there is more yet to be discovered, is all to the good, not a death knell for science.
You're lucky to find a biologist who will even discuss the concept. It's rare to find anyone who does work in biology who's even curious about design. It doesn't bring anything to the table.
Divine intervention is another discussion entirely, though. ;)
That's because the anti-science crowd could destroy our civilization in 2 generations if science has to bow before theology on every issue. You'll notice its not working well in Islamic countries and not much better anywhere else.
Ok. Yours is an immunoassay. p24 is something different.
Sorry for the bluntness, but anti-ID'ers are just not paying attention. The Darwinian Ark is full of holes, and sinking fast.
Do you maintain that The Design Inference is a treatise on theology? (I'm assuming that you've actually read and understood what you are characterizing.)
We have our own internal names for the peptides we use, so I'd have to get help translating it to a public name. I know we use bacillus megatarium to grow one of them. I'm not sure if the other one comes out of the e. coli culture or not. I've been in the suite for the harvests though. PU.
Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls, and a Reality Check for ID
I just had dinner last month with a research microbiologist from a relatively large university and he was telling me how he uses design concepts in a predictive capacity for his research work on bacteria. Now I'm a geologist, not a biologist, so some of the in-depth discussion was hard for me to follow, but the gist of it was that he is able to use reverse engineering as you would with any machine that is designed or like software for that matter, and making discoveries that he is able to publish on.
But whenever I read a description of some aspect of evolution, invariably the author (even if they're a scientist!) will lapse into the metaphor of writing as if the species was trying to solve a problem and so evolved some functionality.
Random mutation & natural selection is a design process. There's no evidence that there's any person per se behind it all, but it's a design process nonetheless. So analyzing a successful biological system as if someone had designed it is kind of a tautology. (Not that there's anything wrong with tautologies!)
Furthermore, he also discussed the design parameters of various bacteria functions and why many of these functions cannot operate without the presence of many (and in the case of some components, up to 50) specialized genes. If any of these genes are missing, that component cannot exist or function. His work has led him to believe that it is impossible to simulaneously evolve 50 specialized genes to give the bacteria this component and there are no intermediate functionalities that could use only some of the genes while the others "evolve' to produce the final function. What is left? Weak arguments for "puncuated equilibrium?"
The same argument could be made to prove that the modern free market economy must have been consciously designed by someone in charge to work the way it does. But any non-communist understands that economies evolve - even though it's made up of quite intelligent people who would happily try to design whole industries from scratch if they had the power. That should give one pause when considering the implications of Irreducible Complexity.
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